Sunday 29 September 2013

Where to for Gears of War?

(Before I start I'll apologise for the length of this blog. I'm just very passionate about this franchise haha)

Gears of War... The first changed my gaming life forever and the series is up there with Uncharted as my favourite franchise from the past 7 years.

Let me go back to the start...

It was 2006 and I was starting to look ahead at what console I'll buy to replace my much loved PS2. My wife had asked which new console I'd get since she was hatching plans for my Xmas present. What an awesome wife I have!!

Nintendo hadn't been on my radar since the SNES so Wii was not for Mii (me).

This left me with two options; Replace my PS2 with the logical choice, PS3, or head for unfamiliar territory in the Xbox 360.

I never did own the OG Xbox but did borrow my Wife's work one a couple of times. I played Halo, Project Gotham Racing 2 and Rally Sport Challenge 2 (please MS, make another one of these!!!) and could see the appeal of the system but never took the plunge. I was very much a Sony guy and had been since the PS1.

So when I saw that Big Boys Toys would be showcasing the systems I jumped at the chance to go and try out the latest and greatest. PS3 was the one I paid my $$ to see so went in convinced that upon release I'd be picking one up (or the wife would be).

So if anyone remembers back to the PS3 launch, it had a pretty dire launch line up. This did little to get me excited and as I wandered from machine to machine I really started to question whether it was worth even upgrading.

Fortunately Xbox was set up pretty near by and I noticed a large structure with a big red skull on it that I would soon come to know as the Crimson Omen. Inside they were running a demo trailer of this game that I could only describe at the time as the greatest looking thing I had ever seen. I was blown away by graphics and the brutality on offer. Somehow this one game made all of what PS3 had to offer seem insignificant.

My eyes were opened to a new world and my wife was quickly informed. Come Xmas I had a Xbox sitting under the tree and I couldn't be happier.

Now the first change was obviously the fact that I had switched console suppliers for the first time in more than a decade.

The second was that Gears 1 introduced me to online play. Being a PS gamer I was not famailiar with the concept and the thought of playing competitively with others scared the crap out of me. Needless to say that jumping forward to today, online is one of the most important parts of gaming for me.

So the first 3 Gears of War games are awesome!! 2 being a particular highlight. 3 was almost as good but had lost a little of the "weight" that Gears was known for. All 3 games were announced and launched to much fanfare and acclaim. MS threw huge marketing budgets at each to ensure everyone knew a new Gears was coming!! We got 5 books and a 20 odd issue comic series which were all very good at linking the back stories to the games. Gears was hot property.

Then at E3 2012 Gears of War: Judgement was announced. There was a trailer shown and then it was gone. To those like myself it all felt very strange, like suddenly MS just didn't hold Gears in the same regard as it's other flagship franchises anymore.

Sadly my worst fears were realised as more news trickled out.

Firstly the games creator Epic Games handed the development to their smaller in house developer People Can Fly (PCF). Nothing against this company, it is just alway worrying when franchises change hands.

Next there was news of many Epic employees, including Gears creator Cliffy B (Cliff Bleszinski)leaving the company. Cliff was the face of Gears and love him or hate him, he would be a huge loss to the series.

Then we started hearing about the changes to the game. Now I didn't mind the campaign as it added some interesting ideas with the declassified sections but the story was definitely the weakest in the series.

The biggest problem was with the competitive multiplayer section. For some reason they thought it would be a good idea to change a few of the key elements that make Gears stand out from the crowd.
- They sped the character movement up and took away that "weight" I mentioned earlier.
- Down But Not Out (DBNO) was removed. This is where unless you were gibbed (killed instantly) you would go down and could crawl to safety and revive or have a team mate revive you. This was an additional layer to Gears that most loved due to the risk/reward factor, especially in Team Deathmatch or Warzone modes where keeping team mates alive was crucial.
- The biggest change though was the very strange decision to remove the Locust and make it COG vs COG.

All these changes lead fans to believe that Epic/PCF were just chasing the Call of Duty/Halo crowd. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on what happens next) the gamble didn't pay off. Gears: Judgement was a failure.

So where to from here?

Many would argue that due to Judgement flopping, Gears is dead. But I have read a few things that give me hope and that we may just see another Gears of War on the Xbox One.

Firstly Epic did come out and say that Judgement was a test of sorts and other rumours point to it actually starting out as DLC for Gears 3. The fact that there is an unloackable section called Aftermath that runs in parallel to Gears 3 while the rest of Judgement is a prequel to the series kind of points to that.

Secondly the head of Microsoft Studios (publishers of Gears of War)Phil Spencer commented recently on how he'd love to see the series return and that it was up to Epic on what happens next. Microsoft have said they are spending over a billion dollars on Xbox One exclusives and it would be very strange for a company to leave such a successful franchise after one miss step.

Sales figures:

Gears 1 = 5.9+ mil
Gears 2 = 6.4+ mil
Gears 3 = 5.3+ mil
Gears J = 1.5+ mil

So onto my hopes and dreams for the future of the series.

Easy one will be moving from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4.
Next gen engine for a next gen game that'll bring all the latest in lighting and physics.

Second would be the use of the much touted Mircosoft Cloud service (Azure).
I'm talking dedicated servers for multiplayer, more believable AI in the campaign as well as for bots if you are using a practice mode for multiplayer.
They could look at new modes such as a persistant online space where a battle could rage on for days with players coming and going while adding to the overall victory. Stats would be consistanly updated as your team wins or loses. Again bots could be used that mimmick real players (ala Forza 5 Drivatars) to either pick up the lack of players or to add an AI controlled element to the battles (see Titanfall).


Thirdly I'd like to see the series move back to what made Gears 1 & 2 so great.
More of that weight I spoke about.
Less weapons to try and fill every perceived gap. Take it back to basics.
A story that runs parallel to the original story, possibly take it back a little further and start at Emergence Day. With the new Xbox hardware they could really show the terror of Sera (the planet Gears if based on) being ripped apart and what lead to the decision to carry out the Hammer of Dawn strikes and destroy 90% of the planets population.

The series has so much history through the games, books and comics. If MS and Epic let this series end on such a poor note it'll be a real injustice to one of the current gens greatest new IPs.

Thursday 26 September 2013

What Are The Incentives For Digital Downloads On Current Consoles?

Okay - let me step into my grumpy boots.

I have just purchased two digital downloads from the Nintendo E-Shop in the past three weeks and have been thoroughly impressed with my purchases - but something sinister is tugging at my conscience...

What is the overall incentive in buying digital downloads, and what possible benefits do I get by by-passing my local outlet?

To make matters worse I have just claimed my points on-line (Club Nintendo) for my purchases, and guess what - I get 50 points less than a retail purchase ticket!

So let me explain - (1) I do not pay for the manual, disc or packaging (2) I do not pay for the shipping or mainland tax and (3) I do not pay for the retail mark-up. What does all that mean when I still pay retail value (sometimes the retailers have specials that better the on-line cost) and I use a large chunk of my Internet data to complete the transaction.

And now, to add insult to injury, I am getting shafted 50 "star" points...

Nintendo? What madness is this? Is this relative to the lesser consumers of New Zealand? Have you actually seen the poor offers being made on-line? Do you even care?

But this trend is not unique to Nintendo so I ask the question - what are the actual benefits of current digital downloads? Hell - when I'm finished with the game I can't even sell the download to another consumer (I am referring to current consoles), so why the exorbitant cost?

If gaming "companies" (I refuse to use the term corporations but it is getting that way) want to make digital downloads more attractive to the average punter they better damn well get realistic about the costs, because it seems to me that the only winners at the end of the day are the publisher - not the gamer - as opposed to both benefiting in this heated and often spurious contest.

Where would any company be without giving incentives to their customers?

And so Sez Jez!

Wednesday 18 September 2013

What is going on?? Why all the hate??

After 7-8 long years the reign of, the current generation of consoles is coming to an end and we have had our first glimpse of what will be ruling our spare time for the next 7-8 years. This is a time for gamers to be excited, feverishly scouring the internet and magazine stands for any piece of news on their preferred system. Thinking long and hard about their day 1 purchases and what game will get to grace they disc slot or download list first. But this time it seems, for many, it is actually a time to slag off the “competition”. Just going on any website forum or comments section is like walking into a school yard and seeing a bunch of kids bicker over whose new ball can bounce the highest. The funny thing is half of the people comparing TFLOPs and MHZ have no idea what it all means and as long as their chosen console has a higher number it must mean it’ll be the new winner of this so called Console War. My question is, when did it stop being about the actual games and more about the bragging rights? Power is definitely not everything or we'd all be playing high end PCs and Nintendo would no longer exist (sorry Jez). I have owned nearly every major console since the Atari 2600 and it is very rare that the power of a system made a game any more fun. I had both the SNES and the Mega Drive but preferred the less powerful Sega because it offered the games I liked (Streets of Rage and Revenge of Shinobi to name a few). The PS2 was weak compared to Xbox and Gamecube but outsold them both by a huge margin plus offered us great games such as GT3, Metal Gear Solid 2 and Grand Theft Auto 3: San Andreas. I guess all I'm really getting at is gamers need to forget all this console war rubbish and just get on and enjoy the games. If you prefer what Sony has to offer, get a PS4. Same goes for Xbox One and Wii U. Just stop trolling the other systems and allow the true fans to get hyped. We are all gamers at the end of the day and should be banding together to show everyone who writes off our hobby as childish that it is a legitimate form of entertainment on equal footing with Movies, TV and Music. If we continue to act like kids we will be treated as such. Now in the words of the Nintendo of America COO and President, Reggie Fils-Aime, "Play the Game!!!"